Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines,

The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no

mere parade now;

War! an arm’d race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away!

War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm’d race is advancing to

welcome it.

Mannahatta a-march — and it’s O to sing it well!

It’s O for a manly life in the camp.

And the sturdy artillery,

The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns,

Unlimber them! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for

courtesies merely,

Put in something now besides powder and wadding.)

And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,

Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,

Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown’d amid

all your children,

But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.

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Arm’d year — year of the struggle,

No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year,

Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano,

But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,

carrying rifle on your shoulder,

With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in

the belt at your side,

As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the

continent,

Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,

Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the

dwellers in Manhattan,

Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,

Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the Allghanies,

Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along

the Ohio river,

Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at

Chattanooga on the mountain top,

Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing

weapons, robust year,

Heard your determin’d voice launch’d forth again and again,

Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d cannon,

I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.

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Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

Into the school where the scholar is studying;

Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no happiness must he have now with

his bride,

Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering

his grain,

So fierce you whirr and pound you drums — so shrill you bugles blow.

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Over the traffic of cities — over the rumble of wheels in the streets;

Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers

must sleep in those beds,

No bargainers’ bargains by day — no brokers or speculators — would

they continue?

Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?

Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?

Then rattle quicker, heavier drums — you bugles wilder blow.

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Make no parley — stop for no expostulation,

Mind not the timid — mind not the weeper or prayer,

Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,

Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,

Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the

hearses,

So strong you thump O terrible drums — so loud you bugles blow.

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From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird,

Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all,

To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs,

To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then,

To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)

Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to Missouri and Kansas and

Arkansas to sing theirs,

To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Carolinas and Georgia to sing theirs,

To Texas and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere;

To sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum if need be,)

The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable,

And then the song of each member of these States.

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Poet:

O A new song, a free song,

Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,

By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,

By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice,

Low on the ground and high in the air,

On the ground where father and child stand,

In the upward air where their eyes turn,

Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.

Words! book-words! what are you?

Words no more, for hearken and see,

My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,

With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

I’ll weave the chord and twine in,

Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life,

I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz,

(As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,

Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)

I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy,

Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,

With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

Pennant:

Come up here, bard, bard,

Come up here, soul, soul,

Come up here, dear little child,

To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light.

Child:

Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?

And what does it say to me all the while?

Father:

Nothing my babe you see in the sky,

And nothing at all to you it says — but look you my babe,

Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-

shops opening,

And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods;

These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these!

How envied by all the earth.

Poet:

Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,

On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,

On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,

The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,

Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,

I am not the wind with girlish laughter,

Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,

Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,

But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,

Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,

Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,

And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,

Aloft there flapping and flapping.

Child:

O father it is alive — it is full of people — it has children,

O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,

I hear it — it talks to me — O it is wonderful!

O it stretches — it spreads and runs so fast — O my father,

It is so broad it covers the whole sky.

Father:

Cease, cease, my foolish babe,